Overcoming Indifference: What Attitudes Towards News Tell Us About Building Trust - TRUST IN NEWS PROJECT
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Overcoming Indifference:
What Attitudes Towards News
Tell Us About Building Trust
______________
Benjamin Toff, Sumitra Badrinathan,
Camila Mont’Alverne, Amy Ross Arguedas,
Richard Fletcher, and Rasmus Kleis Nielsen
TRUST IN NEWS
PROJECTContents About the Authors 4 Acknowledgements 4 Executive Summary and Key Findings 5 1. Identifying Gaps in Trust in News 10 2. Who are the ‘Generally Untrusting’? 23 3. Indifference as an Underappreciated Driver of Low Trust 37 4. Many Are Uncertain About the Practices of Journalism 50 Conclusion 60 Appendix: Methodology 63 References 65
THE REUTERS INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF JOURNALISM
About the Authors
Dr Benjamin Toff leads the Trust in News Project as a Senior Research Fellow at the RISJ
and is an Assistant Professor at the Hubbard School of Journalism & Mass Communication at
the University of Minnesota. He received his PhD in Political Science from the University of
Wisconsin-Madison and a bachelor’s degree in Social Studies from Harvard University. He was a
Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the RISJ from 2016–2017. Prior to his academic career, Dr Toff
worked as a professional journalist, mostly as a researcher at the New York Times from 2005–
2011.
Dr Sumitra Badrinathan is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow who works on the Trust in News
Project. She holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Pennsylvania. Her research
interests include studying misinformation, media effects, and political behaviour in India using
experimental and survey methods.
Dr Camila Mont’Alverne is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow who works on the Trust in News
Project. She holds a PhD in Political Science from the Federal University of Paraná, Brazil.
Her main research interests are in the area of political communication, focusing on political
journalism, media trust, and media and elections.
Dr Amy Ross Arguedas is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow who works on the Trust in News
Project. She obtained her PhD in the Department of Communication Studies at Northwestern
University in 2020. Before pursuing her doctorate, Amy worked as a journalist for five years at
the Costa Rican newspaper La Nación.
Dr Richard Fletcher is a Senior Research Fellow and leads the research team at the RISJ. He
is a principal investigator of the Trust in News Project. He is primarily interested in global
trends in digital news consumption, comparative media research, the use of social media by
journalists and news organisations, and, more broadly, the relationship between technology
and journalism.
Professor Rasmus Kleis Nielsen is the Director of the RISJ and Professor of Political
Communication at the University of Oxford. He is a principal investigator of the Trust in News
Project. He was previously Director of Research at the RISJ. His work focuses on changes in
the news media, political communication, and the role of digital technologies in both. He has
done extensive research on journalism, American politics, and various forms of activism, and a
significant amount of comparative work in Western Europe and beyond.
Acknowledgements
For their assistance in conducting this research, the authors thank Jean Estevão de Souza,
Luciana Chong Rodrigues, and Marlene Treuk from Datafolha; Ahmar Kamal and Vijay Kumar
from Internet Research Bureau; and Martha Espley, Maki Hasegawa, Julie Soulsby, and Trevor
Vagg from Kantar. We are also grateful to Kate Hanneford-Smith, Alex Reid, Rebecca Edwards,
and Louise Allcock for helping to move this project forward and keeping us on track, along with
the rest of the research team at the RISJ for their feedback and input on this manuscript.
Published by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism with the support of the Facebook
Journalism Project.
4OVERCOMING INDIFFERENCE: WHAT ATTITUDES TOWARDS NEWS TELL US ABOUT BUILDING TRUST
Executive Summary and Key Findings
In recent decades, trust in news has declined in many parts of the world (Fletcher 2020). While
the coronavirus crisis has reminded some of the value of independent journalism, boosting
trust in some places (Newman et al. 2021), many continue to regard news with considerable
scepticism. The media are at the centre of often intense public arguments over how societies
generally – and news specifically – deal with important and sometimes polarising issues
including the pandemic but also more broadly the climate emergency, populist politicians,
racial injustice, other social inequalities, and much more. One prominent feature of these
debates is often outright hostile attacks on news media and individual journalists by vocal
and visible critics who actively express their distrust and disdain for the media and its many
shortcomings, both real and perceived, especially on social media.
To be fair, news media are not alone in facing often dwindling public trust. Trust in many other
institutions, including both national and local governments, has also declined in some cases,
as has interpersonal trust. However, social scientists have long stressed that, despite frequent
and sweeping claims of a ‘crisis of trust’, there is no evidence for a consistent, across-the-board
decline in public trust in every country, every institution, or every news organisation (Norris
2011, Newman et al. 2021). These wider developments and pronounced country-to-country
differences are important for trust in news, too, because attitudes towards news media are
difficult to disentangle from other forms of trust towards other institutions (Hanitzsch et al.
2018).
Trust also matters for democracy. When the public place their trust in those who are in fact
trustworthy, it can be profoundly enabling. But its absence can be equally debilitating, and,
when trust is misplaced, it can lead us astray. Trust in news specifically matters for journalists
who want people to rely on their reporting, for news media who depend on people paying
attention to (and paying for) the news they produce, and for each of us as citizens. We all
need trustworthy sources of information to understand and navigate our worlds and consider
perspectives outside of our own narrow personal experiences.
The impact of the digital media environment on trust
Understanding trust in news and how news media may be able to build trust is especially
important in an increasingly digital, mobile, and platform-dominated media environment
where more and more people rely on intermediaries, including search engines, social
media, and messaging applications, to access and discover news. As more people spend
more of their time using platforms – which often provide limited context on the sources of
information displayed and where many do not recall the brands behind stories they have
read (Kalogeropoulos et al. 2019) – there are considerable concerns about how such changing
audience behaviours will impact attitudes towards news outlets that depend on trusting
relationships with audiences.
The changing context around how people access and use news and information risks
imparting trust where it is not deserved (Gursky and Woolley 2021), enabling the widespread
5THE REUTERS INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF JOURNALISM
dissemination of problematic information. The trust gap between news in general and news
accessed via platforms also risks diminishing trustworthy brands’ standing ‘by association’,
as people come across news in environments that also offer many other kinds of information,
including sometimes misinformation or outright disinformation. Surveys document that
majorities in many countries are concerned about whether online news is real or fake. Large
numbers of people are worried about false or misleading information disseminated via
Facebook or messaging applications such as WhatsApp, but also, to a lesser extent, via Google,
YouTube, or less widely used social media such as Twitter (Newman et al. 2021).
In this report, part of a larger RISJ project focused on trust, we use original survey data from
four countries – Brazil, India, the UK, and the US – to develop a more detailed understanding of
how different segments of the public hold varying degrees of trust in news. We do so in order to
help those interested in building trust in news better understand the people they are trying to
reach.
We examine three groups we call the ‘generally untrusting’, the ‘selectively trusting’, and the
‘generally trusting’, defined on the basis of the relative number of news brands respondents
say they trust ‘somewhat’ or ‘completely’. We find consistent gaps between groups not only in
their attitudes towards news itself, but also in their views towards other institutions in society
more broadly. Perhaps most importantly, across all four countries covered, we find that those
who generally lack trust in news are not necessarily the most vocal and angry about news
coverage (who are, on closer examination, often people who are selectively trusting towards
certain news providers). Instead, the generally untrusting tend to be the least knowledgeable
about journalism, the most disengaged from how it is practised, and the least interested in the
editorial decisions and choices publishers and editors make daily when producing the news.
The primary challenge news media and journalists face from this part of the public is not
hostility, but indifference. Reaching them, demonstrating the value journalism can hold for
them, and earning their trust will call for a different set of responses than those required for
engaging with more vocal and visible critics or for incrementally increasing trust among the
already trusting parts of the public.
Background
The RISJ’s larger Trust in News Project seeks to understand the drivers of trust in news, the
factors responsible for its apparent decline in many countries in recent years, the differences in
how this plays out in different places around the world, and what might be done about it. This
report builds on two previous reports we have published: one based on interviews we conducted
with senior managers and journalists at news organisations worldwide (Toff et al. 2020) and
one based on qualitative conversations we held with cross-sections of news audiences (Toff et
al. 2021), which focused on how media users define trust and think about the news they engage
with. While we found some overlap between both practitioners and audiences in terms of the
concerns they expressed about the contemporary digital news media landscape, especially
on social media, we also found some key differences. Audiences were far less versed in the
professional practices that underlie differences between news brands and more likely to base
assessments about trustworthiness on familiarity and impressions about brand reputation.
Some revealed in focus groups and interviews that they sometimes relied on cues tied to how
6OVERCOMING INDIFFERENCE: WHAT ATTITUDES TOWARDS NEWS TELL US ABOUT BUILDING TRUST
news was presented – including its visual qualities, use of language, and other easily observable
indicators of difference – as shortcuts for assessing whether a source was deserving of their
trust.
These findings informed our approach in this report, as did years of social science research
stressing how trust in news is tied to other forms of institutional and interpersonal trust. We
designed an original survey questionnaire and fielded it in May and June 2021 in four countries
spanning the Global North (the UK and the US) and the Global South (Brazil and India). While
each of these large, diverse countries contains its own unique political, cultural, and societal
divides, they are all grappling with the role played by digital media platforms in how their
citizens stay informed.
UNITED KINGDOM
Population: 67 million
UNITED STATES
Population: 328 million
INDIA
Population: 1.37 billion
BRAZIL
Population: 211 million
We worked closely with three independent survey firms – Datafolha in Brazil, Internet
Research Bureau in India, and Kantar in the US and the UK – to poll samples of approximately
2,000 respondents per country to reach populations broadly representative of each country’s
overall population. Surveys were conducted online in all but Brazil, where respondents were
interviewed by telephone and randomly selected on the basis of their cell phone numbers.
Elsewhere, quotas were applied to reach population targets. In India, supplementary
recruitment was conducted via telephone and the messaging app WhatsApp to reach greater
numbers of non-English speakers in smaller towns and cities. Additional information about the
methodology used in these surveys is provided in an appendix.
Surveys were designed to capture a mix of attitudes about journalism as it is practised in each
of the four countries, along with underlying characteristics about individual respondents,
including their demographics, their political views, how knowledgeable they are about news,
and what they think about journalism’s role in society. We sought to balance specificity with
breadth by combining some questions about individual news brands and platforms with
other questions about news more generally. Survey questionnaires took approximately 12–15
minutes online; in Brazil, several questions were omitted because the questionnaire took
longer to complete over the phone.
7THE REUTERS INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF JOURNALISM
Summary of key findings
This report contains a range of findings about news audiences in each of the four countries,
focusing on audiences overall as well as different segments of the public categorised according
to their degree of trust towards news brands in their country. We summarise several of the key
results of our analysis here:
• People are more trusting of news they themselves use, including on social media,
but less trusting of news they don’t use, especially news found on digital platforms.
Relatively high percentages overall say they ‘somewhat’ trust information reported in
the news media generally; however, levels of trust are much lower for specific news
brands and news found on social media. That trust gap between online and offline news,
however, is largely driven by low trust among people who do not use news on these
platforms.
• Many hold highly negative views about basic journalistic practices. Large minorities
in all four countries have very negative or cynical views about how they think journalists
do their jobs, including allowing personal opinions to influence coverage, accepting
undisclosed payment from sources, or deliberately seeking to manipulate the public.
Remarkably, these views vary only somewhat between those who otherwise exhibit low
and high trust in news. Even the generally trusting often have what journalists may
regard as a pretty dim view of basic journalistic practices.
• The least trusting towards news tend to be older, less educated, less interested in
politics, and less connected to urban centres. Although there were some differences
by country with respect to which groups tended to be more or less trusting towards news
brands generally, we also find key similarities across countries in which groups typically
lack trust towards individual news brands. In all four countries, we find wide disparities
between the generally trusting and untrusting in whether they think news organisations
understand people like them or genuinely want to hear from the public.
• The least trusting pay less attention to and are more indifferent towards specific
characteristics about how journalism is practised. We find that factors involving
editorial practices, including transparency about how news is produced and who reports
it, were deemed less important to people who were generally untrusting towards news.
People who were most trusting towards news were much more likely to say these
characteristics were important when they made decisions about what news sources to
use.
• Experience interacting with journalists is rare and familiarity with basic concepts
concerning how news works is often low. Most said they had not interacted with
journalists and few said they were especially familiar with basic terms and concepts in
journalism, including the difference between an editorial and a news story, or between
a news story and a press release. The least trusting were also the least likely to have
experience contacting or conversing with journalists or knowledge about journalistic
terminology.
• Gaps in trust in news align with deficits in social and interpersonal trust as well
as dissatisfaction with democracy. We find a strong correlation between levels of trust
in news, the degree to which people are bonded to other individuals and specific groups
in society, and how satisfied people are about the way democracy is working. These
results point to the extent to which trusting attitudes towards news are in part driven
by factors external to the news itself. Our data also show that low trust in news may
8OVERCOMING INDIFFERENCE: WHAT ATTITUDES TOWARDS NEWS TELL US ABOUT BUILDING TRUST
have implications for how people think about the media environment more widely: the
generally untrusting are somewhat less supportive of free expression and somewhat more
in favour of government censorship compared to other respondents.
9THE REUTERS INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF JOURNALISM
1. Identifying Gaps in Trust in News
In this section, we begin by quantifying how much people trust the news media overall in
Brazil, India, the UK, and the US, the four countries that are the focus of our project. First,
we discuss some of the challenges associated with measuring trust and detail results for
different sources of news in each country. Next, we use these data to divide audiences in
each country into three broad groups: those who are ‘generally trusting’ of most or even
all brands in their country; those who are ‘generally untrusting’ of most or even all brands;
and those in between, whom we call the ‘selectively trusting’. In the last part of this section
– and elsewhere in this report – we use this categorisation scheme to further investigate
factors related to apparent gaps in trust among segments of the public. Some of these gaps
are reflective of concerns about specific news sources and journalistic practices in each of
the four countries, but others appear rooted in people’s perceptions about the information
environment more generally – namely, the role played by social media platforms as well as
more generalised distrust towards a host of other institutions in society. Attitudes about news
specifically are not easily disentangled from these broader considerations.
1.1 Defining and measuring trust
As we have previously written (Toff et al. 2020; Toff et al. 2021), trust in news is a multifaceted
concept involving not only people’s subjective attitudes about how journalism is practised,
but also differing expectations around how news should interact with other institutions in
civic life. Trust is, by definition, a relationship (see Schiffrin 2019; Tsfati and Cappella 2003),
and, as such, the concept often means something different to different people, which makes it
particularly difficult to measure consistently in surveys.
For that reason, social scientists who study trust in news have often taken a range of different
approaches, which have included asking specifically about different dimensions of trust (e.g.
whether news is accurate or fair) as well as different objects of trust (e.g. journalists, brands,
news on specific platforms, or news in general). (See Figure 1)
In designing our own survey, we sought to balance both of these considerations. We include
questions focused on different objects of trust – news in general as well as specific news brands –
and we also incorporate questions allowing us to investigate the relationship between aggregate
levels of trust and how such attitudes align with other identities, ideologies, and experiences.
In practice, survey self-reports about different dimensions of trust in news tend to be highly
correlated with one another – that is, people are not always very good at separating out how they
feel about a particular source of news independently from how they might evaluate aspects of
its journalistic performance. For that reason, although we ask many other questions designed to
capture what people think about news and the social and political forces around them, we begin
with some basic questions that explicitly ask people to reflect on trust – how much they trust news
in general, news they personally choose to use, and then specifically how much they trust a list of
prominent news brands and digital platforms widely used in their country. Elsewhere in the report,
we will say more about the different dimensions of trust that we think underlie these assessments.
10OVERCOMING INDIFFERENCE: WHAT ATTITUDES TOWARDS NEWS TELL US ABOUT BUILDING TRUST
Figure 1: A framework for measuring trust in news
Measuring trust in news
Cues
Messages and claims News media in general
about news that politicians and
others deliberately circulate Modes (e.g. print, TV, digital)
News brands
Individual journalists
News content
Preconceptions Experiences
Normative ideas Evaluations about actual
about the role news should journalistic performance:
play in society and why whether coverage has
been accurate, fair,
comprehensive,
or biased
Dimensions of trust Objects of trust
Note: The categorisation of objects of trust is drawn from Strömbäck et al. (2020). In our previous report (Toff et al. 2021), based
on qualitative interviews with individuals in each of the four countries, we argued that impressions, preconceptions, gut feelings,
and internalised messages about news often played an underappreciated role in how people formed trusting or distrusting
attitudes towards specific media.
Most people say they ‘somewhat’ trust information in the news
While previous surveys, including the RISJ’s Digital News Report (Newman et al. 2021), show
majorities in most countries reject the notion that you can trust ‘most news most of the time’,
we find this broad scepticism towards news does not necessarily prevent people, on balance,
from concluding that they still have some trust in what gets reported.
We find large majorities in all four countries say they at least ‘somewhat’ trust information in
the news media. While very few say they are ‘completely’ trusting, except in India where 38%
say so, the percentages who say they do not trust information in the news media is considerably
smaller than might be expected based on past research.
Our results likely differ from other studies because of the specific way we approached asking
about trust. First, our questions ask people to state how much they trust ‘information from
the news media’ rather than news media as institutions. The emphasis on ‘information’ in
these questions is intentional. As Strömbäck and colleagues (2020) argue, unlike other aspects
of trust, how the public evaluates information reported by the news media matters in ways
that are fundamental for democracy. Whether people see news media as a reliable source of
information specifically determines whether they see the press as ‘living up to its ideals’ when
it comes to both its role in democratic life and serving communities more generally.
We asked respondents about both whether they trust information from the news media in their
country in general and the news media they themselves choose to use. We further included
specific brand-level evaluations of trust in the information reported by 15 news brands in each
11THE REUTERS INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF JOURNALISM
country, selected for being widely used by a variety of different audience segments.1 Finally, in a
separate battery of questions, respondents were asked about their trust in news found on major
digital media platforms such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, and YouTube, since such platforms
play an increasingly important role in how people engage with news (Strauß et al. 2020).
The second way our approach to measuring trust differs from others is that we do not include
a middle response category when asking about trust. In other words, when respondents report
how much they trust information from a variety of sources, they use a four-point scale ranging
from ‘trust completely’ and ‘trust somewhat’ to ‘do not trust very much’ and ‘do not trust
at all’. This style of questioning – a forced-response structure – prevents people who may
feel somewhat ambivalent or unsure from staying on the fence and selecting a midpoint like
‘neither trust nor do not trust’ when they actually do hold an opinion one way or the other.2
The relatively high levels of modest trust we find using our approach are meaningful: people
in general are not rejecting everything they see in the news as unreliable. However, saying you
are ‘somewhat’ trusting towards information being reported in the news media is a low bar,
and elsewhere in the report we show how even those who are generally trusting towards most
news brands hold negative views about how journalists do their work. Instead, these findings
underscore the degree to which people hold a mix of trusting and distrusting views.
Trust in specific brands and news on platforms is lower than trust in news in the abstract
When we examine brand-level trust alongside overall trust in the abstract, we find three
interesting patterns. First, there is considerable variation in brand-level trust in each country,
with several brands in most countries viewed as untrustworthy. Again, the one exception is
India, where a plurality say they trust all 15 brands somewhat or completely.
Second, trust in news in the abstract is generally higher than for any specific news brand. Even
the most trusted brands, like the BBC in the UK, receive slightly lower percentages saying they
trust it somewhat or completely (75%) compared to news overall in the country (78%). We
think this is a consequence of specific brands often being more polarising than information in
the abstract; when asked about news in general, people may default to thinking about more
established, respected sources of information rather than averaging across the entirety of the
news media landscape or thinking about exceptions where they might have more cause for
scepticism (see Daniller et al. 2017).
Third, we also find that trust in news on most digital platforms is lower than trust in specific
news brands. While news on Facebook is trusted ‘somewhat’ or ‘completely’ by a majority in
India (65%), rates are considerably lower in Brazil (42%), the US (35%), and the UK (29%). Gaps
between trust in specific news brands and trust in news found on platforms is particularly wide
for WhatsApp as well, where news is trusted somewhat or completely by just 28% in the UK and
32% in the US, but by 57% in India and 45% in Brazil. Google, on the other hand, ranks highest,
as the most trusted platform for news in all four countries. In Brazil and India the percentage
who say they trust news on Google exceeds any single brand in either country.
1
To ensure variation in our measurement of trust, we also included some brands that cater to more niche audiences along
ideological lines.
2
When we tested the forced-response question using a sample in the UK and an alternatively worded question that included a
middle category of ‘neither trust nor do not trust’, we found 28% of respondents selected the midpoint, considerably reducing the
percentage in the ‘trust somewhat’ category.
12OVERCOMING INDIFFERENCE: WHAT ATTITUDES TOWARDS NEWS TELL US ABOUT BUILDING TRUST
Variation in trust in news by source: Brazil
n Do not trust at all n Do not trust very much n Trust somewhat n Trust completely
Trust information from news media
29% … 21% 22% 6%
'... that you choose to use' 5% 15% 66% 14%
'... in Brazil' 10% 18% 64% 8%
Trust information from the following sources …
Record including Record TV,
Record News, and R7 12% 17% 42% 26%
TV SBT, including SBT Brasil 13% 19% 41% 23%
Band, including Band TV,
Band News and Band News FM 13% 20% 43% 21%
Globo, including
TV Globo, Globo News and G1 23% 17% 32% 27%
Jornal O Globo 24% 15% 32% 26%
CNN Brasil 18% 19% 34% 19%
Folha de S. Paulo 27% 15% 30% 20%
UOL 22% 19% 31% 18%
O Estado de S. Paulo 26% 17% 30% 16%
BBC Brasil 21% 19% 30% 14%
Jornal Extra 21% 20% 31% 11%
TV Brasil 20% 21% 31% 11%
O Antagonista 29% 21% 22% 6%
Terça Livre 27% 21% 21% 5%
Brasil 247 28% 21% 22% 4%
Trust news on the following platforms
26% … 17% 30% 16%
Google 8% 17% 45% 29%
YouTube 12% 28% 43% 15%
WhatsApp 24% 30% 31% 14%
Instagram 20% 29% 36% 9%
Facebook 22% 34% 33% 9%
Twitter 29% 27% 26% 4%
TRUST_PERSONAL. Generally speaking, to what extent do you trust information from the news media that you choose to use? TRUST_
GEN. Generally speaking, to what extent do you trust information from the news media in Brazil? TRUST_NEWSX. Generally speaking, to
what extent do you trust information from the following sources? TRUST_INTX. Generally speaking, to what extent do you trust NEWS
on the following platforms? Base: Brazil = 2050. Note: Responses of ‘don’t know’ (voluntary) or ‘never heard of it’ are excluded from the
figure.
13THE REUTERS INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF JOURNALISM
Variation in trust in news by source: India
n Do not trust at all n Do not trust very much n Trust somewhat n Trust completely
Trust information from news media
29% … 21% 22% 6%
'... that you choose to use' 7% 51% 41%
'... in India' 10% 50% 38%
Trust information from the following sources …
DD News 4% 10% 36% 46%
Times of India 4% 12% 39% 42%
All India Radio 4% 12% 38% 38%
NDTV 24x7 / NDTV India 7% 13% 41% 35%
Hindustan Times 4% 14% 41% 34%
Zee News 9% 13% 42% 32%
Aaj Tak 8% 14% 38% 33%
The Hindu 5% 13% 39% 31%
Times Now 6% 15% 41% 28%
Dainik Bhaskar 5% 16% 40% 23%
Dainik Jagran 5% 15% 41% 22%
Republic TV / Republic Bharat 14% 19% 38% 22%
Amar Ujala 7% 19% 35% 18%
The Telegraph 8% 17% 36% 16%
Malayala Manorama 6% 15% 25% 10%
27%
Trust news on the following platforms … 15% 30% 20%
Google 7% 41% 49%
YouTube 4% 19% 48% 27%
Twitter 6% 17% 43% 28%
Facebook 8% 24% 44% 21%
Instagram 8% 24% 43% 20%
WhatsApp 12% 29% 37% 20%
Telegram 10% 24% 39% 15%
Signal 9% 22% 28% 11%
TRUST_PERSONAL. Generally speaking, to what extent do you trust information from the news media that you
choose to use? TRUST_GEN. Generally speaking, to what extent do you trust information from the news media in
India? TRUST_NEWSX. Generally speaking, to what extent do you trust information from the following sources?
TRUST_INTX. Generally speaking, to what extent do you trust NEWS on the following platforms? Base: India =
2,015. Note: Responses of ‘never heard of it’ are excluded from the figure.
14OVERCOMING INDIFFERENCE: WHAT ATTITUDES TOWARDS NEWS TELL US ABOUT BUILDING TRUST
Variation in trust in news by source: United Kingdom
n Do not trust at all n Do not trust very much n Trust somewhat n Trust completely
Trust information from news media … 31% 29% 6%
'... that you choose to use' 3% 14% 68% 15%
'... in the United Kingdom' 4% 17% 67% 11%
Trust information from the following sources …
ITV News 6% 17% 60% 16%
BBC News 9% 15% 51% 24%
Channel 4 News 8% 19% 57% 14%
Sky News 10% 22% 53% 13%
Financial Times 9% 22% 52% 12%
The Times/Sunday Times 11% 23% 51% 11%
The Guardian/Observer 11% 23% 49% 12%
Daily Telegraph/
Sunday Telegraph 12% 27% 47% 10%
The Independent/i100 online 10% 25% 42% 8%
Daily Mail/Mail Online 21% 28% 41% 7%
Metro 11% 31% 40% 7%
Daily Mirror/Sunday Mirror/
Sunday People 21% 36% 34% 7%
HuffPost (Huffington Post) 13% 31% 29% 6%
The Sun 35% 32% 25% 5%
LADbible 21% 26% 16% 4%
10%
Trust news on the following platforms 25%
… 42%
Google 12% 26% 50% 10%
Instagram 22% 37% 31% 7%
YouTube 27% 35% 25% 7%
Twitter 31% 33% 25% 6%
Facebook 34% 34% 22% 7%
WhatsApp 33% 34% 22% 6%
TRUST_PERSONAL. Generally speaking, to what extent do you trust information from the news media that you
choose to use? TRUST_GEN. Generally speaking, to what extent do you trust information from the news media in the
United Kingdom? TRUST_NEWSX. Generally speaking, to what extent do you trust information from the following
sources? TRUST_INTX. Generally speaking, to what extent do you trust NEWS on the following platforms? Base:
United Kingdom = 2,000. Note: Responses of ‘never heard of it’ are excluded from the figure.
15THE REUTERS INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF JOURNALISM
Variation in trust in news by source: United States
n Do not trust at all n Do not trust very much n Trust somewhat n Trust completely
Trust information from news media
29% … 21% 22% 6%
'... that you choose to use' 5% 17% 56% 22%
'... in the United States' 11% 23% 51% 15%
Trust information from the following sources …
ABC News 15% 18% 47% 17%
CBS News 15% 19% 46% 17%
NBC News 15% 19% 44% 17%
CNN 22% 18% 39% 18%
New York Times 19% 20% 39% 17%
USA Today 17% 24% 43% 12%
Wall Street Journal 16% 23% 42% 12%
Washington Post 19% 22% 38% 14%
MSNBC 22% 19% 37% 14%
Fox News 28% 22% 33% 14%
NPR News 16% 17% 28% 12%
HuffPost (Huffington Post) 20% 24% 31% 8%
BuzzFeed News 20% 27% 25% 7%
Newsmax 19% 18% 19% 7%
Breitbart 21% 19% 15% 5%
22%
Trust news on the following platforms … 19% 37% 14%
Google 15% 22% 44% 16%
Instagram 22% 27% 35% 12%
Facebook 35% 27% 26% 9%
WhatsApp 34% 28% 22% 10%
Twitter 40% 25% 21% 8%
YouTube 35% 25% 14% 8%
TRUST_PERSONAL. Generally speaking, to what extent do you trust information from the news media that you
choose to use? TRUST_GEN. Generally speaking, to what extent do you trust information from the news media in the
United States? TRUST_NEWSX. Generally speaking, to what extent do you trust information from the following
sources? TRUST_INTX. Generally speaking, to what extent do you trust NEWS on the following platforms? Base:
United States = 1,987. Note: Responses of ‘never heard of it’ are excluded from the figure.
16OVERCOMING INDIFFERENCE: WHAT ATTITUDES TOWARDS NEWS TELL US ABOUT BUILDING TRUST
1.2 Changing ways people encounter news and the role of partisanship
One challenge with interpreting these results from one country to the next is that the news media
in each country are distinct from one another in several ways. The specific forms and modes of
media people use both online and offline differ considerably. Likewise, differences in the partisan
political context in each country also shape attitudes towards news in specific ways.
People are generally more trusting of sources of news they themselves use
Certain forms of news are used more widely in some countries compared to others. In India, for
example, 84% said they got news sometimes or often from printed newspapers or magazines,
whereas in Brazil just 22% said they did the same. While social media was used widely in all
four countries as a source of news, messaging apps were far more likely to be used as a source of
news in Brazil (71%) and India (82%), but far less so in the UK (32%) and US (30%).3
Depending on which forms of news people used, it tended to affect how much people said they
trusted news found through that specific intermediary.4 Those who used social media platforms,
and especially those who said they got news from them, generally rated the news found on
those digital platforms as more trustworthy compared to those who did not use the platforms.
Trust in news on platforms is highest among those who use them
Average level of trust on a four-point scale for news on WhatsApp, YouTube, Google, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter among both
users and non-users
Did not use Used for any purpose Got news from
3.5
3.0
2.5
2.0
1.5
1.0
0.5
0.0
Brazil India United Kingdom United States
TRUST_INTX. To what extent do you trust NEWS on the following platforms? BRANDUSE_INTRX. Please click on all of the
platforms that you used FOR ANY PURPOSE in the past week. BRANDUSE_INTRNEWSX. Please click on all of the platforms that
you GOT NEWS FROM in the past week. Base: Brazil = 2,050, India = 2,015, United Kingdom = 2,000, United States = 1,987. Note:
Trust scores are derived by averaging respondent’s trust in news found on each of six platforms where trust is measured on a scale
from ‘do not trust at all’ to ‘trust completely’ and assigned numeric scores from 1 to 4.
3
When we examine what specific platforms respondents said they had used in the previous week, we find that WhatsApp was
used nearly universally in Brazil and India, but by only 57% of people in the UK, and by just a fraction in the US (16%). About
two-thirds in Brazil and India also said they got news from WhatsApp compared to just 1 in 10 elsewhere. YouTube, Google, and
Facebook were also more widely used in Brazil and India – both as a source of news and in general. In India, we also asked about
the use of Telegram and Signal. Half of the sample there (50%) said they had used Telegram for any purpose and 28% said they
had done so and received news that way. A smaller segment (12%) said they had used Signal, including 8% for news.
4
Relying on social media for news more generally was not related to trust in news. On average, we find similar levels of trust
towards the 15 news brands we asked about separately, regardless of whether respondents said they themselves generally got
news from digital or conventional sources.
17THE REUTERS INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF JOURNALISM
On the one hand, these differences are not surprising since people may steer clear of using
platforms they do not trust. On the other, some gaps in trust in news on platforms may be
driven by impressions and assumptions about news found there based on elite cues or word-of-
mouth about their reputations, rather than actual experiences using these platforms.
Importance of partisanship for specific brands
In addition to differences in media mode, one of the other major factors that drives differences
in brand-level trust is partisanship. While considerable previous research has focused on party
cueing as a factor contributing to gaps in trust in news (e.g. Ladd 2011), much of this work
has focused only on the US, where partisan polarisation is a well-documented and debated
phenomenon.
We, too, find considerable partisan differences in levels of trust towards brands in the US
for all but one of the 15 brands we asked about. All exhibited a more than double-digit
percentage point gap between the proportion of Democrats and Republicans who said they
trusted information from the brand somewhat or completely.5 Among the 15 brands, the most
polarising was CNN, where there was a 50 percentage point gap between party identifiers: 79%
of Democrats said they trusted CNN somewhat or completely compared to 29% of Republicans.6
Similarly large gaps were apparent with respect to the New York Times (trusted by 78% of
Democrats but 33% of Republicans) and Fox News (36% versus 62%).
We find evidence of similar trends in the UK, India, and Brazil; however, partisan divides in these
countries were often found only for specific brands rather than across the board. The BBC, for
example, was trusted somewhat or completely in the UK by a roughly equal percentage of Labour
and Conservative party supporters – 78% and 79%, respectively. Popular titles like the Daily
Mail exhibited more polarising responses; it was trusted somewhat or completely by just 41%
of Labour supporters compared to 63% of Conservatives. In India, the most polarising brands
were Republic TV/Republic Bharat (trusted by 72% of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) supporters but
by only 50% of all others) and Zee News (trusted by 85% of BJP supporters compared to 63% of
non-supporters). On the other hand, trust in NDTV was relatively high across the board, trusted
somewhat or completely by 75% of BJP supporters and by 81% of all others.
In Brazil, where fewer people historically identify with political parties (65% of our sample did
not do so), we nonetheless found a significant gap along partisan lines in attitudes towards
Globo, the conglomerate behind TV Globo, Globo News, and G1, among other brands. An
overwhelming majority (83%) of supporters of the Worker’s Party (PT) in Brazil, also called
Petistas, said they trusted information reported by the brand somewhat or completely
compared to only a slim majority (54%) of all others. This is a shift from what happened when
the party held the presidency. At that time, PT supporters tended to be very critical of Brazilian
media in general, especially Globo.7
We return to this subject of partisanship and political attitudes in sections 2 and 4 of this
report.
5
The one brand in the US with a smaller partisan gap was Breitbart, although these differences are larger if the share of
respondents who said they had never heard of the brand (40%) are excluded from calculations.
6
In the US, where partisan identification was measured using a two-part question, we include independents who say they lean
towards one party or the other.
7
For examples of the arguments PT supporters used, see: https://www.brasildefato.com.br/2016/08/31/5-momentos-em-que-a-
rede-globo-agiu-a-favor-do-golpe-parlamentar
18OVERCOMING INDIFFERENCE: WHAT ATTITUDES TOWARDS NEWS TELL US ABOUT BUILDING TRUST
1.3 Dividing up respondents by levels of trust
If many people hold a mix of attitudes towards different news brands, what does it mean then
to be highly trusting or distrusting of news in general? Much of this report focuses on the
factors that are associated with different levels of trust, but classifying respondents by trust is
not as straightforward as it might seem.
Distinguishing the ‘generally untrusting’ from the ‘selectively’ and ‘generally trusting’
As we argued in our previous report (Toff et al. 2021), one of the reasons why trust is important
for individual citizens is because it helps them navigate the information environment. Not
every news source is deserving of trust or consistently reports factually accurate information
reliably. A well-informed, thoughtful news consumer is discerning about the sources they
encounter; they know which sources of news they can trust but they also know which to be
sceptical of and why. In other words, blanket trust of all news may be just as unhealthy as
generalised distrust of all sources.
With that in mind, we sought to classify individuals in each country using the number of
news brands respondents said they trusted somewhat or completely. Doing so allows us to
differentiate between people who say they are trusting (or not trusting) across the board almost
regardless of the brand.
In all four countries, we employ a categorisation scheme that segments respondents into one
of three groups, which we call the ‘generally untrusting’ (who trust information from a below-
average number of brands in their country), the ‘generally trusting’ (who trust information from
an above-average number of brands), and the ‘selectively trusting’ (those in between, who trust
some but not necessarily all or most of the brands asked about in their country).
Segmenting audiences by the number of news brands they said they trusted
Percentage classified in each group according to the number of brands trusted ‘somewhat’ or ‘completely’.
Generally untrusting Selectively trusting Generally trusting
India 25% 47% 9% 17%
Brazil 7% 17% 50% 17% 9%
United Kingdom 10% 17% 46% 20% 8%
United States 12% 13% 52% 16% 7%
Trust no brands Trust all brands
TRUST_NEWSX. Generally speaking, to what extent do you trust information from the following sources? Base: Total sample in
each country: Brazil = 2,050, India = 2,015, United Kingdom = 2,000, United States = 1,987. Note: Respondents were asked about
15 news brands in each country and ranked according to the number of brands they said they trusted ‘somewhat’ or ‘completely’.
Those below the 30th percentile for their country were classified as ‘generally untrusting’ and those above the 70th percentile were
classified as ‘generally trusting’.
We use the term ‘untrusting’ as opposed to ‘distrusting’ deliberately to denote an absence of
trust, which may be driven not only by affirmative distrust of specific brands but also a more
general lack of brand awareness. In other words, respondents who have never heard of most
19THE REUTERS INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF JOURNALISM
or even all of the 15 news brands are classified as ‘generally untrusting’ along with those who
specifically report not trusting any of them. What we seek to capture using this method are
distinctions between those who have a trusting relationship with an average or above-average
number of news brands in their country from those who do not.
This method of categorising respondents allows us to make more standardised comparisons
between countries, and we do so throughout the remainder of this report as we investigate
characteristics associated with people in each of these groups. We acknowledge, however, that this
method also oversimplifies some of the country-specific differences at the extremes. For example,
in India, even among the ‘generally untrusting’ there were very few respondents who said they did
not trust any of the 15 brands, as well as a majority of the ‘generally trusting’ group who said they
somewhat or completely trusted each and every one of them. In the US, on the other hand, 12%, or
nearly half of the ‘generally untrusting’, trusted none of the 15 brands versus just 7% who trusted
all of them. We do not believe the boundaries between groups are black and white, but we do
believe segmenting respondents into these three groups is a useful mechanism for characterising
relative differences within these populations that are revealing in important ways.
People who lack trust in news also lack trust towards other institutions
Not all gaps in trust in news can be explained by attitudes towards news itself, which is the
focus of much of the remainder of this report. In fact, when we divide up respondents according
to the ‘generally untrusting’, ‘selectively trusting’, and ‘generally trusting’, we find that these
divides also map onto attitudes towards other institutions in society.
First, we present results for each country overall. We included in our survey a set of questions
designed to gauge levels of trust towards various groups in each country, adapting a commonly
used battery of questions in the long-running World Values Survey (WVS) that asks respondents
how confident they are in various institutions. The specific groups or organisations we included
in our survey differed to some degree depending on the national context, but we included
many across all four, including the military, the courts, local or national governments, and
scientists, as well as the press. (We use the term ‘the press’ to remain consistent with the way it
is referred to in the WVS.) We find in most countries that the press was among the least-trusted
institutions named, but we also find that majorities in all but the UK said they trust the press at
least somewhat.
Overall trust in ‘the press’ is lower compared to many other institutions in society
n Do not trust at all n Do not trust very much n Trust somewhat n Trust completely
Brazil
Scientists
The Catholic Church
The Evangelical Church
The military
Courts
Police
The press
National government
Local/State government
20OVERCOMING INDIFFERENCE: WHAT ATTITUDES TOWARDS NEWS TELL US ABOUT BUILDING TRUST
n Do not trust at all n Do not trust very much n Trust somewhat n Trust completely
India
The military
Scientists
Courts
Civil Service
National government
Local/State government
The press
Police
United Kingdom
Scientists
The military
Police
Courts
National government
Local/State government
The press
United States
Scientists
The military
Police
Courts
Local/State government
National government
The press
TRUST_INST_X. Thinking about the following organisations in [Brazil/India/UK/US], for each one, could you tell us how much you
trust them? Base: Total sample in each country: Brazil = 2,050, India = 2,015, United Kingdom = 2,000, United States = 1,987.
Note: Institutions asked about varied somewhat by country.
Trust in the press, however, is far from uniform. When we examine responses of those who
are generally untrusting of news brands versus those who are generally trusting, we find wide
disparities. In the US, for example, as few as 10% of those who are generally untrusting say they
‘completely’ or ‘somewhat’ trust the press, compared to 85% of those who are generally trusting
of most news brands. Gaps in trust towards the press between the generally untrusting and
trusting were somewhat smaller in the UK (by 56 percentage points) and Brazil (45 percentage
points), and smallest overall in India (36 percentage points).
What is also striking about gaps between the generally untrusting and trusting is that
respondents in each of these groups also hold divergent attitudes towards other institutions in
society beyond just the press. For example, while 69% of Americans say they trust the courts
somewhat or completely, just 50% of those who are generally untrusting of news brands say the
same, versus 84% of those who are generally trusting of news.
21THE REUTERS INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF JOURNALISM
Similar divides are seen across most other institutions in the other three countries as well.
When we average across these groups, the gap in trust between the generally untrusting and
generally trusting (of news) is smaller than the gap in trust towards the press, but it is still more
than 30 percentage points in the UK and US, albeit smaller in Brazil (11 percentage points) and
India (23 percentage points).8
What these results suggest is that some divides within countries around trust in news may
be driven, at least in part, by more fundamental differences in worldviews when it comes
to a broader set of institutions in society. In sections 2, 3, and 4, we delve more deeply into
some of these differences. They involve not only assessments about how journalists conduct
themselves, but also differing attitudes about what role news organisations should play in
public life.
8
There is just one institution that is an exception to this dynamic. In Brazil, the generally untrusting of news brands are somewhat
more trusting of President Bolsonaro’s national government (52% say they completely or somewhat trust it), compared to 42%
of those who are generally trusting of news brands. That said, only 40% of those who trust no brands at all say they trust the
national government completely or somewhat.
22OVERCOMING INDIFFERENCE: WHAT ATTITUDES TOWARDS NEWS TELL US ABOUT BUILDING TRUST
2. Who are the ‘Generally Untrusting’?
In this section, we explore some of the key divides across demographic, socioeconomic, and
political lines when segmenting respondents by levels of trust in news, in order to better
understand who tends to be the least trusting towards news brands overall. We find some
patterns that vary from country to country involving people’s social and political identities, but
we find some more consistent patterns as well: those who trust news the least also tend to be
the most dissatisfied with democracy. We also find a link between a lack of interest in politics
and a lack of trust in news, which suggests that part of what may explain variation in levels of
trust in news is indifference towards news rather than active hostility – a point we return to
in the next section. Shedding light on these divides illuminates how broader structural factors
may contribute to gaps in trust more generally.
2.1 Demographic, political, and place-based trust gaps
In examining differences between the generally untrusting and other groups, we find overall
that each country is rather unique, with more differences than similarities across particular
subgroups from one country to the next. This is especially true when it comes to the role of
politics, where each country’s distinct environment in terms of press/state relations shapes
attitudes towards news in different ways. Gaps in trust can clearly be traced to attitudes people
hold towards polarising political leaders or parties, but not in a uniform ideological manner. We
also find some more consistent trends with respect to particular demographic variables: older
people, those without college degrees, and, to a somewhat less consistent extent, people who
are white or living in smaller towns or rural areas all tend to be more concentrated among the
group we call the ‘generally untrusting’.
Identifying demographic and socioeconomic divides in trust in news
The accompanying table summarises key differences when comparing the generally untrusting
to other groups in each of the four countries. We find the most consistent patterns with respect
to age: people aged 55 and older are more often generally untrusting, whereas those who are
under 35 are typically overrepresented among the generally trusting segments of the public.9
These differences are especially notable in Brazil, where people over 55 make up 38% of the
generally untrusting group but only 18% of those who are generally trusting. The reverse is also
true: people under 35 account for 42% of the generally trusting group in Brazil but just 24% of
the generally untrusting.
In terms of gender, we find consistent patterns across Brazil, India, and, to a lesser extent, the
UK, where the generally untrusting are more likely to be men (accounting for 59% of the group
in both Brazil and India and 53% in the UK). In the US, the generally untrusting are about
evenly divided by gender, although men are significantly more likely to say they trust all 15
brands.
9
In India, although older respondents are overrepresented among the generally untrusting, people under 35 are not necessarily
more likely to be generally trusting. Instead, they make up 46% of the untrusting group and 39% of the trusting group. People
under 35 in India are more concentrated among the selectively trusting.
23THE REUTERS INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF JOURNALISM
How the ‘generally untrusting’ differ from the general public
Summary profile of the ‘generally untrusting’ in each country
Brazil India United Kingdom United States
DEMOGRAPHICS
Age Older Older Older Older
Gender More likely to be More likely to be More likely to be —
men men men
Religion More likely to be Less likely to be More likely to be More likely to
unaffiliated; less Hindu unaffiliated; less be Protestant,
likely to be Catholic likely to be Anglican Evangelical; less
likely to be Catholic
Race/ More likely to be Less likely to be — —
ethnicity & white General/Upper
caste caste
SOCIOECONOMIC CLASS
Education — Tends not to have Tends not to have Tends not to have
college degrees college degrees college degrees
Employment More often self- More often More often self- More often self-
employed unemployed, employed; less employed; less
retired, or self- likely to be private- likely to be private-
employed; less sector workers sector workers
likely to be private-
sector workers
Income Less likely among More likely among More likely among —
lower-income lower-income lower-income
households households households
POLITICAL PREFERENCES
Partisanship More likely Less likely to be Less likely to be More likely
unaffiliated; less affiliated with the affiliated with the Republican or
likely for Petistas BJP three major parties unaffiliated
Favourability Tends to evaluate Tends to evaluate Tends to evaluate Tends to evaluate
ratings Jair Bolsonaro Narendra Modi Boris Johnson Donald Trump
favourably unfavourably unfavourably favourably
GEOGRAPHIC DIVIDES
Region More likely in More likely outside More likely outside —
Southern region Northern region Greater London
Urbanity — Overrepresented in Overrepresented in Overrepresented in
smaller towns rural areas rural areas
Note: Only statistically significant differences at the 95% level are summarised. In some cases, sampling limitations may prevent
some differences between groups from reaching statistical significance; the lack of apparent differences does not necessarily
mean no differences exist.
When it comes to socioeconomic status (as measured by education, employment, and
household income) we see some broadly similar trends across all four countries. In India,
the UK, and the US, for example, people without college degrees are more often generally
untrusting and less likely to be classified as generally trusting; however, this pattern
did not extend to Brazil, where differences were not significant.10 We also find in all four
10
In India, 28% of the untrusting group did not have a college degree versus 12% of the trusting group. In the UK, those without
college degrees were 74% of the untrusting group and 64% of the generally trusting. In the US, the gap was larger: 73% versus 58%.
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